The Problems with Liberalism, Part 3

3. A liberal believes that education is a basic human right.

• I won't reiterate the logic about who bestows a "right" if there is no higher authority than government. There is no John Rawls for education.
• Is there a basic human drive to educate? Probably. But even more basic is the drive to learn. Children emerge from the womb ready to learn. Some believe that babies learn some things before emerging. Do they hear voices, music? They certainly can react to what the mother consumes. Just see how the baby of a alcoholic or druggy mom appears upon arrival! Yes, babies soak in information in all sorts of way. But particularly, they learn from those closest to them. By the time the formal government-funded education system gets its hands on your child, a good amount of learning has already occurred. No matter how equal or unequal schools may be, children are already greatly unequal by kindergarten. Indeed, reading skills by the end of first grade predict how a child will do all through schooling. "The System" has had only 1 year of impact, but parenting has had at least 6. Much of the good or harm is already done by the time the child enters school. Can good and great teachers help? Absolutely! But relying on an education system to somehow overcome bad parenting is not substantiated by longitudinal studies.
• For the liberal, it all boils down to what "education" means. And they want to define it for everyone. Should school be where the spin stops? Is a school system that teaches one universal interpretation better than one that teaches another? Should education be practical or based upon principles? Should education be outcome based or process based? Do you want to produce good citizen-clones or independent thinkers? What values should we instill into students? What behaviors? What skills? All this assumes that the teachers have the upper hand, but do they?
• Think about this story. A young girl is born into a family where, for generations, the women in her family made pottery. Their pottery is famous for its beauty and utility and the women enjoy a degree of fame and respect for their mastery of their craft. It is expected that, as she grows up, she will also be a pottery maker. But, she rebels, as did her mother. Her mother, in less permissive times, was forced by her mother to work in the pottery business and eventually came to love what she did. But now it is modern times. The young girl, determined not to be a pottery maker and encouraged by what she learns in school, decides that being a pottery maker is not for her. Her parents, also now more modern, send her off to college, then graduate school, then another graduate school as she desperately tries to find her "true purpose" in life. Along the way, she experiments with her life, trying different cities, countries, foods and drugs. Just trying to see where she might fit in, but she just can't seem to find the one true purpose for her existence.
• I am not even going to touch the concepts of how different students learn differently, disrespect of the teachers by children and parents, disorder in the classroom, lack of ability to discipline, and propaganda based curricula. The best and the brightest do not dream of sending their children to public schools, but that is exactly where most of the brightest people I know from my generation got their start. My high school had the motto: Know Something, Do Something, Be Something. Does anyone believe or teach that anymore?
• Note to liberals: everyone learns, but not everyone learns what you want them to learn or maybe what would be best for them. To "educate" everyone equally and fairly, you need to take all children away from their mothers at birth and place them into facilities to make sure that no one gets a head start, a different perspective, a contaminated world-view. And, of course, those caring for these children cannot be human, as they might develop emotional bonding to some children but not others, leading to an institutional bias.

In summary, we all have the internal drive to learn. Learning best serves mastery of purposes that lead to higher levels of accomplishment and existence. Parents, siblings and other relatives and friends are feeding the heads of children long before "Big Brother" can get its hands on them. The truly happy people understand their purposes in life, see their individual purposes as part of a bigger picture, and have the skills and freedom to pursue these to mastery. No central command and control can make that happen. It is the freedom of individuals, guided by those closest to them, that leads to the exceptional success stories that make us a great country. It is the exceptionalism of the individuals pursuing their individual life purposes, sometimes doing this together with others who share their dream. Teachers and schools play a role, but are only part of the story, and likely not the most important part.